by Jeremy Scott
THE ABLES
JEREMY SCOTT
The Ables
©2015 by Jeremy Scott
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
Published by Clovercroft Publishing, Franklin, Tennessee.
Cover Layout by Suzanne Lawing
Cover Image Illustrated by Michael Korfhage
Interior Layout Design by Mark Neubauer
Edited by Tammy Kling
Printed in the United States of America
978-1-940262-65-9
Prologue
Those of you with sight are going to have to bear with me, at least for a while. There’s only so much a blind person can give you in the way of visual detail. To be clear, I didn’t even see much of what I’m about to tell you. Thankfully, with a story like this one, there’s plenty of non-visual detail to go around.
Even though my eyes don’t work—they never have—I’ve been a witness to some pretty fantastic things. Some horrible, some wonderful.
There’s another world tucked right inside the world you know. You’ve only seen flashes of it, enough to get some conspiracy theories going, but not enough to serve as hard evidence. It is a world where amazing things are done every day by ordinary-looking people.
And I’m going to show it to you.
There are some secrets you just don’t tell, and this story is full of them. The truth is about to come out soon enough anyway, and it won’t be very long at all before the whole world can see what has been hidden for centuries.
For a good portion of this tale, you’ll have to rely on the information I gleaned from my other senses as well as the eyewitness accounts of my friends. Don’t worry; I’ll do my best to compensate for my lack of vision with my other four senses.
I’ve been doing that all my life. You’d be surprised what I can tell about a person or a thing just by listening, smelling, or touching. Open your mind to the possibilities, and maybe you’ll see some interesting things along the way as well.
I used to be just like you. Reading stories about regular people doing incredible things. Then I found myself smack in the middle of such a story. I learned a few things about myself through the experience … and about others. Things that might be helpful to someone like you, someone about to find their world turned upside down, as mine was.
So if you believe in the unbelievable, as I have a feeling you do, read on.
The Ables – Part One: Summer
Chapter 1: The Talk
I was twelve years old when my father had “the talk” with me, and it was the single greatest moment of my life. It didn’t start out too well, but it turned around pretty quickly. To say that it was a turning point for me personally would be an understatement of the highest order.
I’m sure you’re wondering if twelve isn’t maybe a bit old for “the talk.” That’s exactly what I thought as well. I had picked up most of what I figured I would ever need to know just by listening to other people. Honestly, I had long since congratulated myself on being one of the lucky few whose parents didn’t feel the need to sit down and explain where babies come from. Surely that talk would have come before now. I thought I was free and clear.
I suspected something was up almost as soon as Dad said word one.
“Son …”
There were exactly three levels of seriousness in the talks my father would have with my brother and me while we were growing up: “Somewhat Serious,” “Normal Serious,” and “Super Serious.” Each variety had its own tipoff word, right at the start of his first sentence. If he opened with our nickname—Phil for me and Pat for my brother—it was a “Somewhat Serious” chat. Which meant we didn’t have to stop what we were doing and turn our heads in his direction so long as we actually heard what he said and successfully repeated it back to him.
Lectures opening with our full first names, or first-and-last-names together, were of the “Normal Serious” variety. Stop what you’re doing, and turn and listen. There’s probably some new rule you have to follow after this conversation is completed.
This variety almost always has the lingering potential to escalate, so tread carefully.
Speeches that started with “son,” well, you can only hold on for dear life. You have either screwed up in spectacular fashion and are about to receive the punishment of a lifetime … or you’re moving to another state. Or someone died. Also, the length of the pause between the word “son” and the rest of the lesson was directly proportional to the severity of the impending matter. In my entire life, my father had started exactly five conversations with me in this manner. It was the one trick he pulled out for only the most devastating announcements.
“Son—” he said.
I was reading a book—“Moby Dick”—because the classics were the easiest to find in Braille, though we’d also managed to find a handful of Braille comic books over the years. Almost instantly, I felt my stomach drop. Dad had walked into the room somewhat casually from the sound of it, hands in the pockets of his suit pants—he always wore dress pants, always, without exception. He was just standing there, I guess, hanging out for a few moments before dropping the bomb.
“—let’s go for a drive, what do you say?”
I said what any twelve-year-old would say in response to the most loaded question in the universe, “Um, sure … okay. I guess.” I didn’t know what I was in for, but I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to enjoy it.
“Great,” he said, in somewhat of a forced manner. “I’ll get the keys.”
As he turned and went for his keys, my mind raced. If someone had died, he would have been acting more upset. There was definitely something strange about his demeanor, but it wasn’t sadness. Nervousness, maybe? He was acting weird, for sure. But not “your grandma’s dead” weird. Plus, my grandma was already dead—all my grandparents were.
We weren’t moving to a new city again, because we’d only just gotten here. Our family had been residents of Freepoint for exactly five weeks.
A horrifying thought hit me as I mentally ticked off any and every possible reason for the upcoming chat of doom: I was about to have to endure “the talk.” After flying through several other ideas, nothing else seemed to hold any weight at all except for this theory. Dad and I had never had “the talk.” And he was nervous!
As the reality of my fate set in, I basically wanted to die. I would rather have had to endure a thousand days of being grounded than listen to my father talk to me about sex. I imagined it would be awful, and I was certain it would be far worse than I could imagine.
As we reached the door that led from the kitchen to the garage, my mother and little brother came into the room from the hallway. Without saying a word, my mother reached out and squeezed my shoulder, and I could tell she was smiling at me. Oh crap, I thought, this really is “the talk.” “Get off the counter!” she screamed at Patrick, her hand still on my upper arm. Mom had mastered the art of yelling at one child while talking to the other about something completely different.
“I love you,” she said softly. “Patrick, I’m going to count to three,” she warned sharply without turning her head. She had also mastered the art of seeing things peripherally, sometimes even demonstrating the ability to know about things that were going on in completely different rooms.
Mom released my shoulder and turned to scramble after Patrick. Dad and I turned and headed into the garage. I could still hear her shouting at him as we climbed into the SUV.
Patrick was eleven going on four. The older he got, the more hyperactive he became. He was born just fifteen months after I w
as, and even without having had a sex talk from my parents, I knew that meant they hadn’t wasted any time. Some days, our proximity in age made Pat and I inseparable best friends. Other days, his boundless energy and my lack of sight made us both more interested in avoiding each other.
Once Dad and I were on the road, I started to feel sick. I knew I was in for an emotionally scarring experience, so I figured it would be best to get it over with as soon as possible. “So … where we goin’, Dad?” I asked. I had tried to act casual, but wasn’t remotely convincing.
“Well, do you remember Mr. Charles?” he asked.
I pondered the name. “The old man you keep inviting over for dinner?” There was this super-old guy who’d been over to the house once or twice since we’d moved to Freepoint. He seemed nice enough, I suppose, but terribly quiet. Some nights he didn’t say a word. I often wondered what he and Dad even had in common. I guess maybe he reminded my father of his own father, who had died before I was born. Either way, the old man creeped me out.
“That’s the one,” Dad said. He actually seemed impressed that I knew who he was talking about. “Well, Mr. Charles has a farm just outside of town a ways, and I thought we’d go take a walk around the place.”
“We’re going to take a walk at a farm?” I blurted out before I could really stop myself, my own skepticism hanging noticeably in the air.
“Uh-huh.”
Defeated—and still nauseous—I punched the button to change the radio station to one I liked, turned up the volume a bit, and slouched back into the passenger seat with my arms crossed.
This is the kind of thing that could scar me for life. I am way too old for this. I’m having the birds and bees talk with my father a good year or more later than I should be for such a thing … and we’re going to a farm to have the talk so that we can be in the company of actual birds and bees! Wonderful. At least I won’t have to see his face when he does it. That would be … even more awkward. Poor Patrick, he’s so screwed.
Freepoint is a small town, maybe nine or ten thousand people. There are only a few stop lights, and just one grocery store—the Freepoint Grocery. Everything in town had similarly creative names. There was the Freepoint Bank. The Freepoint Diner. The Freepoint Convenience Mart.
It was a far cry from our previous home of New York City. I’m not sure we could have moved to a place that was less like our previous home. We’d been in Freepoint just a handful of weeks, and in just one day, I would be starting at Freepoint High—a combination middle school and high school spanning grades seven through twelve. Pat was still one year behind me, which meant that he would be headed to Freepoint Elementary. He had thrown several tantrums about it. In New York, a sixth-grader would at least be in middle school, not elementary.
It didn’t take a person too long to get from one end of Freepoint to the other, usually just five minutes or so, at least by car. After a couple songs on the radio, we’d already gone beyond the streets I knew by sound and feel to the outskirts of town.
Eventually, the car pulled down a long gravel driveway and came to a stop. Dad turned off the engine and removed the keys. We sat in silence for a few seconds. Finally he spoke. “Well … we’re here. Let’s go stretch our legs a bit.”
If we have to. “Okay,” I said aloud.
We got out and Dad led me around to the back of the house, where I heard him yell hello to Mr. Charles, who was either dead or simply not listening because there was no response. I heard some chickens clucking and fluttering around and a dog barking in the distance. We kept on through what seemed like a much bigger backyard than ours and continued on out into the fields.
“On your left is a huge cornfield, and on your right … another one just as big. We’re walking down a grass path between the two, and the corn is taller than I am.” My father—my whole family, for that matter, even Patrick—was very good about setting the scene for me when we went someplace new to help me visualize the surroundings. I always thought it was just the kindest gesture, and I say that without an ounce of sarcasm. “There are over seventeen acres of farmland here.” We came to a stop. “There’s a picnic table here under giant twin oak trees. Let’s have a seat,” he said.
We sat on the table surface itself with our feet on the bench, facing out over the cornfield. My father began to sigh here and there, fidgeting considerably. For the first time, I wondered how he must be feeling, realizing that this couldn’t have been any more appealing a conversation to him than it was to me.
A healthy breeze was blowing, rustling the oak leaves and the tops of the corn stalks. The dog in the distance continued to bark but sounded much further away now. And aside from that, it was silent. Eerie, even. When you pay as much attention to sound as I do, true silence, or anything close, is a rarity. You can almost always hear something if you really want to.
“Son …” he said for the second time in an hour, which was followed by the single longest post-“son” pause in the twelve-year history of my father’s big talks. It seemed like nearly a whole minute or two of pause. “Son,” he said again, as though trying to jog himself into speaking.
“I wanted to bring you out here today so that we could have a conversation.”
Aw, crap! I knew it. Please get this over with quickly.
“But it’s not an easy conversation to have.”
Imagine how I feel.
“But it’s an important conversation to have. And one that every kid in this town will have to have with his or her father or mother at some point. And, to be honest, it’s a little overdue. I probably waited several months too long to have this talk. I guess I didn’t want to admit that you’re growing into a young man now.”
Kill me. Just kill me.
“Life goes by so quickly, as you’ll learn, and I just wasn’t ready for this moment like I hoped I’d be.”
Oh for the love of—
“But you’re old enough now that you need to be aware of how some things work. I can’t stop you from growing up, but I can protect you and help guide you into making smart decisions. But to make those smart decisions, you need information.”
I’m pretty sure most of this was regurgitated from a parenting advice book he must have read. Or an after school special. My father never talked like this, and it made the whole scene all the more unsettling to me.
I decided to put us both out of our misery, or at least attempt to. “Dad, I know what you’re going to say. I know what you want to talk about. You don’t have to say anything because I already know everything about it.”
“You do?” he asked, incredulously, the same way he did whenever I told him I knew who the killer was ten minutes into one of those cop shows. I didn’t have to see him to know he was definitely grinning ear to ear.
“I do,” I said boldly and authoritatively. It was the truth, for the most part. I had the general idea. The rest I could fill in with trial and error.
“Phillip, I know kids in the neighborhood talk, and that there are whispers—”
Whispers?! How long ago was it that you were a twelve-year-old kid?
“—but I seriously doubt that you know what we’re here to talk about.” His tone was different now, suddenly much more at ease. It was almost as though my overconfidence had melted his nerves away and broken the ice for him a bit.
He paused briefly. “Besides, I have a duty as your father to explain things to you, even if it’s not going to be easy. To dispel the misinformation you might have overheard. So … to that end … let’s get this over with.”
Yes, let’s do.
“You’re twelve now. You’re starting seventh grade tomorrow. New school. You’ll be a man soon. And your mother and I think that it’s time for you to know more—a lot more—about—”
He let a moment of silence pass for effect … the P. T. Barnum of father-son sex talks. He sighed an over-exaggerated sigh, the kind of sigh you let out right before saying something you can never take back, and finished his sentence.
�
��—your super powers.”
***
My father’s sense of humor is notoriously hilarious to him alone. Most of it consisted of awful puns and un-clever wordplay. If you asked him to make you a piece of toast, for example, he would point his finger at you, make a bug-zapper noise, and say “Poof! You’re a piece of toast.”
He would typically deliver one of these stunning one-liners, most of which we heard at least once a week, and then follow it up with some good-natured chuckling. It was the most annoying thing ever.
I waited more than a few beats after his sentence ended but did not hear the usual chuckling. I thought perhaps he was stifling his laughter a bit longer than normal at this latest gag.
“My what?” I asked, somewhat annoyed. I was so geared up for some big punch line that I didn’t even consider the possibility that he was being serious. Never even crossed my mind. This was supposed to be “the talk,” and he was just prolonging it for his own entertainment. I was so sure of it I couldn’t even process what he was actually saying to me.
“Phillip,” he said quietly, a smile in his voice, “you have the best hearing of anyone I’ve ever met. Do you seriously expect me to believe you didn’t hear me?”
I thought about it for a moment. I did have fantastic hearing, mostly by virtue of being blind. They say the other senses pick up the slack when you lose one, and I found that to be 100 percent true.
And I had heard him say “your super powers” just now, of that there could be no doubt. But that couldn’t actually mean that he’s trying to tell me I have super powers, right? Because that would be ridiculous.
He broke my train of thought. “I’m here to tell you that your world will never be the same again. After today, your new journey will begin. Your journey to become … a custodian.”
My brain was in limbo. I cocked my head to the side like a Labrador. My mind felt like pudding. Thoughts simply weren’t coming to me. So I said something designed to buy me more time. “I’m going to be a janitor? What are you talking about, Dad?”
